Tuesday, 30 April 2013

Motorise your window blinds with Arduino

It can be quite expensive to order custom motorised window blinds - however with an Arduino, motors and some time you can do it yourself. With the use of a simple motor, control circuitry and the right sketch you can make your own blind controls that are sensitive to light, temperature or operate to a schedule. To get started, consider the tutorial published by Instructables user "cgmalantonio" wwho used a motor from an old VCR, a motor shield and some hardware to hold it all together. It's a simple method but gets you started on the hardware side of things:

Once you have the motor working effectively, so much more can be done. Visit theInstructable to get started. And for more, we're on twitter and Google+, so follow us for news and product updates as well.

If you found the project above interesting - but not sure how to start with Arduino - then the best way to learn is with our Experimenter's Kit for Arduino:

The package includes a wide variety of parts, sensors and modules including: a servo motor, lights, buttons, switches, sound, sensors, breadboard, wires and more. Furthermore a Freetronics Eleven Arduino-compatible board is included to make this an extensive hobby experimenter, inventor and starter kit. However we don't leave you alone to figure it all out, included is a great project and instruction booklet, plus access to a supporting web page and software examples. In other words - this is everything you need to get started for a fun range of electronics and Arduino related projects!